Tennis, tennis everywhere. This week I have five matches, thanks to a rainout last week. For that one, I now have a 6-0, 6-0 win thanks to a line on the other team defaulting. But I am on for the other four days. So far I have a 4-6, 6-1, 10-4 win from Monday, and tomorrow I have a 3.5 match at ACAC playing at #3 doubles with a partner I've never played with before. Thursday Michele and I are playing at #1 singles, or at least I hope we are. I'm not in the mood for singles right now--too much pressure when my rating is on the line, and I'm not psychologically stable enough to ignore my feeling that if I blow it, I'm going to be a 3.0 for the rest of my natural born existence.

Right now I am taking a reading break to watch a show on the National Geographic Channel about human feet, with no legs, washing up in shoes in British Columbia and northern Washington. I really cannot imagine a more disgusting topic, but I'm strangely drawn to it despite the nastiness. Today was a fairly productive day, about which I will post pictures tomorrow, so I'll save the information about Shalom Farms for that. Last night I went to a used curriculum sale that typically nets me much of my material for the following year, and though it was not as good as I remember past ones to be, I did come home with a few gems. I bought two IEW products--The Elegant Essay, which is aimed at high school students, and Teaching the Classics, a DVD set that sets out a procedure for analyzing literature. I don't particularly need that, but I am fascinated by procedural methods of teaching skills, so I look forward to watching it and using the materials with my boys. My understanding is that the techniques and charts can be used with any age student. I also got some very entertaining SAT prep books (I especially like the vocabulary one, which has extremely funny sentences), the next Wordly Wise for Ollie, and a used copy of Algebra 1/2 by Saxon. But the best find was a little group of older books from the 1950s that are just delightful. One is by Elizabeth Coatsworth, who I really like, and the other was a mystery story by Mary C. Jane called Mystery in Old Quebec. We read it all today as a read aloud, and everyone loved it. It is well written, well paced, just the right length (123 pages with some illustrations here and there), and quaint enough to make us all smile at its language and what the children were allowed to do--10 year olds left on their own all day long in an unfamiliar city in another country while their father is in business meetings. I'll be looking for more books by her, though I suspect they have probably lost popularity and may be out of print because they are no longer "current."

And speaking of the library, I paid a $60 fine today. Yes. I'm embarrassed. But it's still cheaper, I suppose, than buying all those items I didn't return in a timely fashion. I figured the best response to that would be to turn right around and check out fifteen new items, including three movies (movies are what get me into trouble most of the time).

Meanwhile, we are still reading My Louisiana Sky and we just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. As luck would have it, the movie of that appeared on the Disney Channel yesterday, and despite our tight schedule, we saw all of it by watching the end earlier in the day and then the rest of it later, since there was a reshowing (no, I don't really know how to use our DVR, and we happened upon the movie halfway through in the first place).

Now I'm obsessed with the idea of a spontaneous trip to Quebec. I've never been to Canada, and I'd like to go. Of course, I have no time whatsoever for something like that in the foreseeable future, but that, in my opinion, is what is wrong with my life right now. Details, details, but we also don't have money for it, and I'm not brave enough to camp solo outside a major city so far from home when I know nothing about the place.

Overcorrection is a word that has become a bit prominent in my mental life lately. I spent a few hours with a new friend before I left for camping on Friday, and we were discussing some of our "overcorrections" in our life. Like having four kids and wishing for more when I was an only child. Or making camping a priority in our family when I never once went camping or hiking or even really into the woods when I was a child. Or wanting to take on a lot of volunteer responsibilities when I don't have a significant paying job that makes me feel competent and useful and contributory to society. Now, I'm not sure that this overcorrection is "bad," so to speak, but perhaps it is explanatory, or perhaps it is a clue to what is wrong with how I conduct relationships. I make no bones about the fact that I am to blame for my awry relationships, and any clues about what drives my selfish single-mindedness are, well, clues. It doesn't mean I have the faintest clue about what to do about these clues or, blush, that I feel especially ready to renounce what I want (you're probably not going to get me to stop camping, for instance, though I suppose I could be flexible and not involve other members of my family in my own passions). Counseling will probably never be particularly helpful to me until I decide that I am ready to change. So far, I'm just not sure. I'm sort of sad to say that, but it's hard to let go of my own hopes and dreams with a clear heart and conscience, even if my own hopes and dreams are seriously flawed and self-destructive. I guess I cling to my right to self-destroy in the name of dreams. At least it sounds kind of romantic, right? I promise I will grow up and be mature some day, so perhaps I'm in the adolescent phase right now and harmony is yet to come as I develop.

Since this is a place I can put my own personal feelings, I'm going to talk about this spring of my discontent, but with a disclaimer that I really do think I'm becoming one of those cantankerous, impossible to please old ladies. I'm starting to wonder if I'm just determined to be displeased no matter what is going on and if I'm just well, kind of getting off on being crochety. So there. Now I'm going to talk about my carpet.

I had been looking forward to getting new carpet in our house as the event that would Change My Life Forever. Now we got it, and from the minute I first walked on it before it was even installed everywhere, I was not happy with it. It's too thin. It doesn't feel soft and wonderful and luxurious. It feels kind of chintzy. It feels too thin. It isn't cushy. Though it looks loads better than our old carpet (hey, mulch would have looked better than our old carpet!), it doesn't feel as good. The padding is too thin. You can feel where the staples are when you walk barefoot. You can feel seams. You can feel where the padding ends. It looks funny on the stairs. And in some places it isn't tacked down properly. That is something that we can get redressed, but what do you do when you aren't happy with the...whole thing?

I went to a major local flooring retailer with a good reputation because I didn't want to fall into the cheap trap we typically fall into by using someone that a friend recommended who was "cheaper" and who then vanishes off to the Philippines by the time you discover that the hardwoods were improperly sealed or the granite wasn't measured and cut to the right length. I also wanted a full service experience--wanted to come in and say, "I have four kids, two dogs, and we're slobs with poor bladder control. We want the best carpet for our situation that we can afford," and to have them direct me to just the right product. I felt like this is what I did. I had three estimates from three different places, I went with the middle one for a variety of reasons--price, full-service (furniture moving and replacement, not sub-contracted, etc.), reputation if anything went wrong. And I took home carpet samples and chose the better of the ones I brought home. I asked several times if this was a good carpet choice for fairly active people who are fairly rough on things, and I was told yes. Maybe they just don't make things like they used to.

But what is a person to do? Sure, we can get "I feel carpet staples" addressed, and we can get "this stuff on the stairs doesn't seem tacked down well enough" addressed. But let's just say you ordered a sleeping bag from LL Bean for your Boy Scout son. It came, and you felt it and decided that this bag you ordered isn't going to cut it for that Northern Tier trip, that you really were thinking that the 15 degree bag would be fine with a liner, but after feeling it, you just *know* that you need that -15 degree bag that weighs a little more but that will serve for years to come. Obviously, you send it back and get what fits your needs. Now imagine that you just spent $7k on carpet that is going to put you in debt, that you really didn't have, and that took some sacrifice on everyone's part. You bought it as an investment that you expect to have for the next 15 years or so and that will improve the value of your home if you find you have to sell it in three months. The company custom orders it, custom cuts it, and sends out two people to spend nearly nine hours moving your furniture and installing it. You removed every single thing that you own out of your upstairs. You risked your already risky marriage over this thing. And it comes in, and from the second you step on it, you know that it isn't "right." What do you do? And quite seriously, I don't want representatives of a flooring place either suing me or killing me in my sleep if I say this isn't what I was looking for and isn't up to my expectations.

After all, I picked it, right? I asked for help with the choice because I didn't know how to pick, but in the end, I picked it. I feel like a total dunce. And you know what? Nothing's going to change because (a) my husband thinks I'm insane and imagining things (even though I invited two friends over to corroborate my suspicions that it isn't "right") and (b) we're wimps and even if we do feel deeply disappointed, we'll never do anything because we're too afraid. And I'd add a (c) I'm afraid I'm a whiner, so I don't want to do something that will prove it.

I really hoped for a carpet that felt so clean, plush, and wonderful that I would want to invite everyone I know over to have a sleepover on the floor. When I've bought a bound remnant as a rug for downstairs sometimes, I've had that *awesome, cushy, can't keep my body off the carpet* feel. I don't feel that up here.

So enough about the carpet. Carpet is probably the least of my troubles. So I'm going to focus on the positive things in my life right now. My boys are Boy Scouts now and are having a great time. At least I assume they are having a great time--they are gone camping at Dutch Gap this weekend, a two night campout. Unfortunately, last night there was one of the worst thunderstorms in recent memory, featuring driving rain, intense lightning, and pounding hail. And they neglected to take along the suggested synthetic fiber clothing that would dry easily and had only a change of cotton clothes. But I'll bet it was a grand adventure. I had two friends and their husbands over for dinner tonight, partly with that ulterior motive of making them opine on my new carpet situation, and partly because now that my floor won't entirely nauseate people, I'm eager to let people in my house now. We also had some new friends, Rutledge's speech therapy buddy and his family, over for several hours yesterday. It was a lot of fun to spend time with them, and the dogs got a lot of good exercise. We have an excellent dog trainer and had our first dog training session this week. I can already see a difference, if not in behavior, at least in response to us. Right now we are working on "loading" them on the clicker, making sure that they know that the click means a treat is coming. We are going room to room and making sure that they are associating the click with the treat no matter where they are. And we are working on getting them to respond by looking at us when we call their names. Poor Helen is still very nervous--she cried all through class because she was across the room with Ollie when she wanted to be with me and Bilbo. She also was too anxious to turn over to be cradled and massaged, though I think she'll be fine doing it at home. Our other task is to make sure that we are supervising them 24/7 for the next 8 weeks while they are in class. I have to admit, I've already screwed up a few times. I have lost track, forgotten to watch, and one of those times, Bilbo swiped a plate of potato skins off the table on our screened porch. And Helen worked a little more on the hole she is digging in the middle of the yard. But we're all kinds of works in progress, so I suppose we can cut ourselves a little slack.

Otherwise, I'm sort of drowning. Falling apart, really. I am wondering if I'm finally just losing it. I am not keeping up well at all with my various volunteer and supposedly paid responsibilities. I literally just cannot get my act together. I am getting resentful of people who ask me questions or put demands on me. I want to slink away in a hole and disappear. I am privately very snappish and snotty ("Find the damn swimsuit order information yourself--you can check the website or ask someone as well as I can, for God's sake!"), but unfortunately, when actually asked, I sound all contrite and willing to serve ("Sure, I'll find it for you and get back to you."). I'm about at the cracking point. I wish I had nothing to do with swim or dive team. Wish my kids weren't even on them. Wish we were doing nothing at all this summer and all of our time is our own. Now that I'm in charge of all volunteers for dive team, etc., I have to be at all the meets, I have to be at all the meetings, I have to be available.

I currently believe that the only way out of this is to move. Pronto. Like in the next month.

So I'm left just feeling really, really resentful, especially of myself. I can't believe I put myself in a position where I'm stuck, alone, and barely have my head above water (truth be told, I think everyone can see that at this point, my nose and mouth are clearly submerged and I'm circling the drain). I hate failing. But I'm also thinking I really wouldn't mind a selfish phase where I don't commit to doing anything for anyone but myself and my immediate family.

Then I have this situation at church where I've been asked to teach Sunday School, my visceral response was, "No! I love going to a Sunday School class myself and it's a high point in my week getting to see these women, and no way do I want to take myself out of that to take on more commitment." Next I'll think, "But gosh, that's selfish." And then I'll remember, "Didn't my last therapist keep telling me that I needed to be selfish, that my problem was that I wasn't selfish enough?" (Now my husband would be guffawing and rolling on the floor if he heard someone say that about me, but whatever...). I actually led that class on boundaries a few weeks ago and mustered up some courage from that and said No, I can't, it would be irresponsible of me at this time to take on any further responsibility and I need to be in this other place and helping there. But now I've been asked again--a kind of pretty please, everyone else is chipping in, can't you just do one or two weeks. And my gut response is No! No! I want to be selfish! I want to go to the adult class! I want to get support for myself rather than teach others! I don't want to commit to being in town those weeks! And then, being me, I feel guilty for feeling that. And then justified, and then guilty, and then justified. And around and around it goes. So guess how I actually respond...by avoiding it altogether, not answering email, and thinking, "Hmmm, maybe I'll just find myself a new church or become an atheist or something."

Why is life so complicated!

You know what isn't complicated? Sitting here typing on the bed across the room from my daughter, who is feeling a little lonely in the house without her older brothers, the same older brothers who she normally feels are tormenting her. Having her tell me, as she is drifting off to sleep, that the book she is reading, "The Care and Keeping of You" by the American Girl company, has the word "vagina" in it and that she just flipped ahead, but she isn't really sure she wants to read the part about periods yet because that is gross. I agree. Periods are gross. I remember my own shock when I first heard that this was not just going to happen to me, but would happen for *decades*! And knowing that my warm, sweaty, curled-up sleeping little boy in his Mario Kart Wii pajamas is going to be carried upstairs in a few minutes to cuddle next to his big sister. And that tomorrow we will all be happy to see Walter and Ollie come back all dirty and smelly and with lots of wet things that will need to be hung all over the yard, even though Friday before they left may have been full of screaming because he spit on me or he touched my ears or he's telling on me. Then there are my roses blooming so perfectly in the front yard, next to my indulgent yellow perennials (we only trampled two playing softball). And my two trying-their-hardest doggies, including dear Helen, who is probably just really happy that she is no longer living in a concrete and chain-link run and has a soft bed and den of her own and a family who loves her and feeds her treats continuously for ten minutes at a time three times a day in the name of "training." Deep down, I know that there's really a lot more to life than thick carpet or even analyzing your many deficiencies to death.

Can't get pictures uploaded.
New dog=Helen=perfect
Starting dog training classes with both dogs on Thursday
Carpet going in Thursday
Freshly painted upstairs hallway, stairwell, trim, doors
Painted Frances' bedroom, but not done
Need to recoat Ollie's room
Still need to bail out upstairs
Lots of boxes of miscellaneous items needing sorting
6 trips to Goodwill
Trash can overflowing, pickup three days away
Lots and lots and lots to do

Facebook has been spying on my mind. I must have posted something, because now it is setting ads in my right margin about moving back to Blacksburg, job listings there, and solicitations from moving companies. I swear I do have one foot already out the door.

My carpet moment coming is the perfect time for me to reassess whether I need certain things. We are already starting the process of getting books and things from dressers and shelves downstairs so the rooms are empty. I have a feeling I'm going to like the sparse look, so maybe some of the stuff won't go back up!

We are in the midst of looking for a new dog. It's hard to be emotional about the process. Right now we have in an application with Richmond Animal League, but they are pretty tight about who they will adopt to, and we may not make the cut. Because our cat is an indoor/outdoor cat, it might be a problem for an adoption through them. We also had been not entirely up to date (based on traditional, not holistic schedules) with vaccines for Bilbo. He has been extremely healthy and also doesn't have much of a social life--up until recently he rarely left the backyard or our house. We also don't board him or send to him any kind of daycare. So Friday I took him in to make sure he had had his yearly exam and everything recommended. I hope it wasn't too little too late.

The dog we would like to adopt is a 3 year old black lab who we have called Helen (she's Jamie at RAL). She seems relaxed, happy, smart, and plays very well with Bilbo. Bilbo, we have noted since Hokie has been gone, is a pretty laid back dog for someone so young. He is pretty much a couch potato. It's a sad commentary on one's activity level if I run faster than they do! But I have been walking him 2 or so miles a day for the past two weeks, and he is getting faster, if not thinner. I'm still having trouble figuring out how to keep the cat food in a place where the cat can get it, but he can't. My latest attempt was to put up a gate in my walk-in closet door, which sort of worked with Bilbo (until he knocked it out), but for some reason was higher than the cat was willing to jump. So the next step was on the counter. This works fine unless he stands on his hind legs and pulls it. Now I'm on to trying the washing machine. So anyway, sweet Helen would probably fit well for us because she seems calm, friendly with us, and would be a good companion to Bilbo. She looks like a classic man's best friend. I suppose we shall just wait and see if we are approved, and move on from there.

Fish tank remains. Now that I don't care, it doesn't seem to cost quite as much or be so unstable. We just replaced one of our T5 lights, but otherwise, things seem stable and uneventful. Hopefully they stay that way!

The last thing I should be doing at nearly 1 a.m. is writing here, but I'm not tired yet, I have a bed full of kids next to me, and I don't really need to leave the house until 8:45 tomorrow, I think. That means I can sleep until 8:25!

Rutledge just got bumped into a "reading group" at preschool. In some ways, this feels like a ridiculous and American concept. He's not yet in kindergarten, and yet it felt like he was "delayed" and therefore somehow deficient because he was one of the last holdouts in a class where he is definitely not the youngest. I tend to be of the philosophy "better late than early" when it comes to this kind of thing. Of course, saying that, I'd really appreciate having just, say, one "early" in a sea of lates so that my heart would beat a little more regularly. If he was in a Waldorf school or a European-inspired environment or even a little more hardline NAEYC preschool, this wouldn't be an issue at all, but I can't help having my brain wander over and think about how other kids seem to get this whole reading thing at all the "wrong" time so why won't mine?

But now Rutledge is making progress in that area. He knows all the letters and their various sounds. He can read the words "see" and "I" and has memorized the text in his little book he brought home. He is working through Headsprout reading (www.headsprout.com) and getting 96% or more correct in each lesson. This is the program that moved Frances from a low 1st grade level to beyond a 3rd grade level in reading in about three months. I don't expect he's going to be truly reading at the end of it, but he perhaps will have some ideas planted in his head that he will find useful at a later time. What I can say is that he is proud of his ability to sound out some words, he is pleased to be in a reading group, finally, and he does have that doofy Hooked on Phonics tape memorized.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this Vitamin D thing, and I've determined that my official feeling, at this point, is that sure, it may be a problem, but it is a red herring. It's not the REAL problem behind why Walter is of short stature. There seems to be little causal relationship, barring a more severe situation like rickets, between small size and low vitamin D. We're forging ahead with him taking about 15 times the RDA of it anyway, but the jury is kind of still out. Meanwhile, I've been continuing to make a serious effort to improve our family's mealtimes and nutrition. In particular, this has meant seriously limiting the treats and sugary food that, unfortunately, I crave with unstoppable fervor. It is revealing to me yet again, as if I need more revelation, that it is just really darn expensive to eat the right foods. Fifteen cups of fruit a day, which is what we need to cover everyone in the family, is just, well, a lot, and it costs a lot. And it takes a lot of cutting and processing and creativity. And a lot of trips to the store. If we all drank as much milk as we should, we would be going through a gallon and a quarter a day (we're not all doing this, though; I'd be truly ill if I drank 24 ounces a day without consuming half a bottle of Lactaid). I also still don't believe anyone who claims that those baby carrots taste like candy. No they don't! They taste like carrots! I really like my chocolate, thank you very much. But I have been good.

My mini-goal lately has been to move Bilbo closer to being accident-free in the house, and I cautiously can say that there has been small progress. We have been taking him for walks 3-5 times a day, and we have been making an effort to have him walking about 2-2.5 miles a day in an effort to help him lose weight that he has gained this winter lounging around the house and stealing food from the cat. I have sliced his calories way down by making one simple change (I should sell this secret on the Internet!). He is no longer getting any cat food. I put up a gate in my closet door that is so tall that even the cat can't get over it! I also switched him over to "weight control" dog food, now that I'm not having to balance needs with a dog who was too skinny. His multi-mile walks are also mine, and my goal is to move us both up to running the whole way in the near future. I'd settle for just having a walk without a thunderstorm in the middle of it, though.

This week we also seem to have gotten back into our routine of reading and getting regular schoolwork done. All of the appointments and labwork and morning engagements last week really cut into our time, but this week we've hit all major subjects, and we are making good progress in Walk Two Moons, a book that could not be further from what I thought it would be about. Somehow I thought it was going to be about a Native American girl, but instead it's a pure example of the "trailer park" genre of Newberry winners--right in there with The Higher Power of Lucky and Because of Winn-Dixie. They can get to be a little formulaic. Some themes that are really a bit much for the intended age group (8-12), quirky characters with a mysterious pseudo-profound air about them, mothers who leave their own children because of their complicated issues, children who blame themselves and try to understand the coping of imperfect adults. I am kind of anxious for it to end, just because it isn't engaging me all that much. But I'm going to stick with it. We're also reading Island of the Blue Dolphins at the same time. And I honestly do want to finish Heidi and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. It's kind of interesting reading several things at once and also revisiting books that I've read with one or more children over the past few years. I had wondered how I would handle it when Frances and then Rutledge got older and I had already read everything, but I guess the answer is, it's never a bad idea to reread aloud something that you already know. The ones who have already heard it are free to leave, but they are liking hearing about Ramona or Fudge again.

I still feel so fortunate to have the time to spend in copious amounts with my children. It is becoming more clear each day that the older ones are truly going to grow up. They aren't going to be sitting around listening to me read forever, and I can see that these really are the wonder years, the ones that I'll miss deeply when they are gone. It's good to keep that in perspective on the frustrating days and to really treasure the days that we have.

Hokie Clendenon
1994-2010

Today was one of the hardest days. We have known for a while that Hokie was not going to live forever, and over the past few months, he has lost an incredible amount of weight and had become emaciated. He was blinder, deafer, and didn't always have his balance about him. But he still was living a decent beagle life--dumping our kitchen trash can, valiantly defending his food dish, checking out the back yard, roo-rooing at other dogs. For the past two weeks, I actually believed that he might be putting on weight again (he had a voracious appetite, and we were feeding him 3-4 times a day trying to add anything back to his frame), but on Friday, he started to look very, very gaunt. Friday night I found him hiding underneath some blankets and clothes on the floor of our laundry room. Saturday morning, before I left for my Dad's house in Pulaski, I had to guide him into his crate because he was wandering aimlessly, and he felt like he was hollow when I picked him up. Then Kerry called to say that he knew why Hokie was looking so skinny again--he wasn't eating or drinking. He had been given food several times, and he just walked away. Anyone who has beagles knows this is a sign of serious trouble.

Last night was rough. Hokie went outside and went under the house and wouldn't come back out. I was out of town, but Kerry was afraid that he was going to have to send a child under to get his body. But he lived until morning. And then he started vomiting, and it was deep, smelly vomit coming from his intestines. He went to the emergency vet, who concurred with what our vet has suspected, that he has liver or stomach cancer. We could have taken him to a veterinary oncologist tomorrow, but chances are, his condition couldn't be fixed anyway, and the treatment would just be further trauma. And then, when I saw him when they brought him in from the back of the office, it was clear that he was not likely to live until morning anyway. Poor boy was actively vomiting while they gave him the injection, but now I know he is out of his pain and he will not have to starve or dehydrate to death, nor would he have to die without us if he had to stay for treatment. We were able to be there with him in his final moments and to pet him afterwards. We were given some clay pawprints from him.

Hokie was my baby long before I had human babies. I got him from the Rio Hill pet shop back in my last week of my first year of graduate school. I know better now than to buy a dog from a pet store, but in his defense, he was from a local breeder who was not a puppy mill, and though he may not have necessarily been bred with the utmost care for health and conformation, he was a gorgeous, healthy, perfect-tempered beagle, and we had been to shelters all over the state looking for the right dog, and he was it. I hid him in my apartment and slept with him in the tiny bathroom there so that he would not howl at night or pee on my floor that week. When I took him for walks on Montebello Circle, I would have to carry him home because his tender pink pads on his feet weren't callused yet and the road was too rough for him. He lived with me on 14th Street, and he worked with me every day of his first summer, when I was helping to edit Piers Plowman for an electronic edition. We went up to Shenandoah National Park several times a week for most of his first year and a half and hiked every hike under seven miles. He had many good buddies at the dog park and at the park down the street from us.

During later years, after the Shenandoah Era, which ended with Tucker, who wasn't very reliable off lead and who got carsick, he shuttled back and forth between Charlottesville and Craig County, where he had the opportunity to chase horses, romp in fields, and play with our kitten. He was always gentle, tolerant to a fault, and affectionate. His only vice as an adult dog was that he could be aggressive toward puppies. As a family dog, he put up with all kinds of pulling and dragging and falling on top of him. Like most beagles, he was a couch potato, but if called to action, he was more than ready to leap up and stay with you as long as you needed him to be rugged and athletic. During his prime years, he was the kind of beagle that people who stop us on the street to walk to because he had such a beautiful coat and square muzzle.

It feels odd to be in a house that doesn't have Hokie in it. The picture above was from just last year, when he still had a healthy looking body. At 14.5, our vet called him "The best looking fourteen year old beagle I've ever seen." Bilbo is pretty subdued tonight.

I am putting my energy now into helping Bilbo become the dog he should be. I have not been a good pet owner with him. I have done a very poor job of training him. He's a sweet, affectionate, calm, tolerant beagle as well. But after the previous owners' dogs marked the carpet and floors and then Tucker had trouble in his old age and then Hokie backslid when Tucker did, he isn't the best housebroken dog. I recognize that this is my fault. We have a crate, and to some degree we have "crate trained," but I know I haven't done it by the book, and I've let him out unsupervised too often and we have also slacked off because we have a fenced back yard that he can go in while we aren't home or while we aren't watching. Just because he goes outside doesn't mean he's not going to go in the house, also. In the past few weeks I have started regularly walking him for a mile or two a day, trying to get in a short morning walk and a longer evening walk at the least. I've never had to walk a dog in order to housebreak before, but this is a new dog, and we're always being asked to adapt and learn, aren't we? I'm also being meticulous about having him in the crate when we are not able to active watch him. So far I haven't seen any accidents, but then again, I may be missing some of what happens upstairs. Since we are getting new carpet in three weeks, even though we will gate the stairs so that he can't go up, I would still like to feel like I have not been a complete dog failure. Over the past few weeks I've been researching dog breeds and thinking about what our next dog might be, and it has really hurt me that even close friends have said that I should absolutely not get any more dogs because I have been such a bad owner of the ones I have. The immature side of myself wants to get one just to spite them (not that they care...I'm the one cleaning up the messes), sort of a "ha, I'll do what I want." I'm not the best human parent, and I'm not the best dog parent, and it is perhaps selfish of me to want living things as a comfort and companion for myself, but I can say with all honesty that my life has been much, much better for having had Hokie in it, and the sixteen years I spent with him not only would not have been the same without him, but have given me so much love and so many wonderful memories that I wouldn't trade them for clean carpets or even an intact sense of accomplishment as a trainer or person. Hokie, may you find much peace and happiness over the Rainbow Bridge, and I hope the bunnies are plentiful there.

My garden is gorgeous. In fact, my lettuces are ready for harvest and taste scrumptious. However, I have a confession to make. I AM the biggest loser. Excited by my lovely bounty and the tender crispness of the salad blend up front, I bought Kerry a few leaves and forced him to eat them. The next thing I knew, he was vigorously spitting them into the sink! I was offended! He said it was "dry." Hmm?

So I went out to get a few leaves for myself, and soon I found myself spitting into the kitchen sink.

When I went to the garden and picked up the marker, what did I find but "Petunia!"

Now he is so angry and terrified that he is going to die of petunia poisoning that he is not speaking to me. Now he is sick. I'm afraid. And it's all my fault.

Which is kind of a shame because this is the first time we have been home with no children (they are watching a movie with a neighbor) in probably, well, ever.

I have researched the toxicity of petunias, and the flowers are not toxic. What's less clear is whether the leaves are; no one touches this subject to my satisfaction. They do seem to be okay for turtles and deer and dogs and cats, but I don't know much about people. Plus I noticed that the pictures of petunias didn't look at all like my leaves. My leaves looked like crinkle-edged lettuce, and online petunia leaves are small teardrops. I fear that I have no idea what I ate! But it is sticking in my throat and still feels like it is there.

Who said gardening is for wimps?

And who has been moving my garden markers?!